Education can be defined as the system of learning that enables the acquisition of knowledge, skills, morals, and values for personal development. The traditional education system emphasizes on physical learning sessions conducted between teachers and students in the classrooms. In this type of system, the teacher designs and delivers instructional curriculum as well as evaluates the performance of students at specified times.

However, the introduction and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in education have not only shifted teaching and learning in the traditional system but have also provided tremendous potential to assist as well as solve various problems. The survey published in the Forbes indicated that 60% of educators have already adopted AI-powered tools to improve their teaching responsibilities in the classrooms. Figure 1 shows the result of the survey that indicates most teachers found AI has improved educational outcomes in classrooms. The AI-powered tools such as chatbots, intelligent tutoring systems, educational games, and automated grading systems offer opportunities to tackle various challenges faced by educators, students and their educational institutions. For instance, in the case of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES), initially it has trouble registering students for classes using the one-on-one outreach. But by collaborating with the Mainstay Company, the UMES resolved this problem through implementing an AI-powered text messaging strategy which proactively engaged students to register for their classes much earlier. This AI tool was able to reduce significantly the enrolment holds from 500 holds to 27 holds and at the same time allowing the staff to focus on the other more pressing problems.

In addition, AI has the capability to support therapists, teachers and parents in special education. For example, special education often faced difficulties such as lack of trained therapists and experienced limited time in taking notes as well as monitoring behaviour in the applied behaviour analysis (ABA) for students with special needs. In attempting to overcome these problems, the Hong Kong’s Bridge Academy transformed its special education system by developing an innovation AI-powered system known as the Bridge AI. This system was able to analyse learning, collect psychological and environmental data automatically, track student performance as well as recommend Individualized Education Plans (IEP) for the special needs students. Interestingly, at the same time, the Bridge AI was able to show the parents remarkable improvements in their children’s communication, focus and socialization.

It is equally important to know and understand that there are also certain limitations associated to the adoption of AI in education. For instance, more and more students are depending on accessible AI tools such as ChatGPT to generate academic papers instead of learning to write them independently. This is making a significant impact in higher education institutions. According to the Turnitin report, since 2023 over 200 million papers were reviewed by using the AI writing checker. Out of the 200 million papers reviewed, more than 22 million papers were found to contain at least 20 percent of texts generated by AI. This has resulted in accusations of academic misconduct among students. Furthermore, it has also been reported that the students who excessively used ChatGPT due to heavy workload and time pressure were more likely to engage in procrastination, experienced memory loss as well as performed poorly in their academic work. Figure 2 illustrates the result of the survey that shows most teachers discover AI-powered essay generators to be the most common cheating method used by students.

Even though AI-powered tools can perform certain academic tasks more efficiently, these tools are unable to replicate the empathy and personal connection found among the human educators working in the traditional learning system. Recently, educational researcher John Hattie revealed that strong and emphatic relationship between teachers and learners had 2.5 times greater impact on learning compared to personalized learning. Additionally, another study also found that students who were learning in purely digital environments had lower academic performance compared to the students who were engaged in face-to-face learning.

In summary, although AI appears to offer various opportunities to education, integrating AI into this field also comes with numerous challenges. Most importantly, the adoption of AI and its numerous tools should be used for the purposes of improving as well as supporting the traditional roles of teachers rather than attempting to replace them. Given the many benefits of AI, educators and students that rely on traditional methods of teaching and learning need to learn as well as adopt AI-powered tools that emphasizes on creating AI-enhanced learning experiences. At the same, there is a constant necessity to educate teachers and students so that they can use AI-powered tools more effectively, safely and ethically.